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Morgan, Washington counties agree to trade gravel

Agreement will save on mileage, costs

The agreement will allow Morgan County to use gravel mined from a pit leased by Washington County, and vice-versa, (Wikipedia Commons photo)

They say many things in life are better shared. Morgan County will soon find out if the pits where gravel for the county's roads is mined are among them. That is thanks to a new intergovernmental agreement between Morgan and Washington counties that was approved on Tuesday. The agreement will allow Morgan County to use gravel mined from a pit leased by Washington County that is located near Washington County's northern border with Morgan County. In exchange, Washington County will be able to use gravel mined from two pits that Morgan County leases. Those pits are located near Morgan County's northeastern border with Washington County.

Commissioner Mark Arndt, who presented the agreement at Tuesday's commissioners meeting, said it will allow the counties to save mileage and thus money by using gravel from the other county's pits in those areas of each county that are closer to those pits than the ones leased by the county.

"We'll be able to get more productivity out of our trucks and drivers and it'll do the same for Washington County," Arndt said. "It will roughly go from almost an 86-mile drive round-trip to bring [gravel] to those portions of our county to about 32 miles so it's a considerable mileage savings.

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Arndt said the agreement would initially function as a "trade" with each county paying for the gravel mined out their respective pits. However, he anticipated that Morgan County would ultimately use more gravel through the exchange. As a result, Arndt said the agreement will be amended to include a quarterly accounting process for to evaluate the amount of gravel that has been mined from their leased pits. If one county is using more gravel than the other, that county could then pay the other for that gravel.

"We don't want one county to get too far ahead and carry the other county in the expenses," Arndt said.

Arndt said the agreement is a result of gravel being a scarce commodity in northeastern Colorado. He said a lot of gravel can be mined from the Platte River but that such river mining is tightly regulated and often restricted which is why the county now gets it gravel from its two dry pits. Dry pits are not subject to nearly as much regulation as wet pits. The county previously used a wet pit on the river near Weldona but the 2013 and 2015 floods ruined that pit and led its owners to close it. Arndt said Morgan County is now looking into leasing pits in areas of Weld County northwest of Morgan County as all of the pits Morgan County has access to are located on the far eastern side of the county where there is a big gravel vein. This makes transporting gravel to the western parts of the county costly and inefficient.

The limited access to gravel and increased transportation distances and costs that has resulted from the closure of the Platte pit has led the county to resurface roads with new gravel far less often than it used to. Arndt said roads are now surfaced with new gravel only about every four years when they used to go only about a year-and-a-half between resurfacings.

Other commissioner business from Tuesday's meeting

At Tuesday's commissioners meeting, Morgan County Clerk and Recorder Susan L. Bailey also announced that in-person voting for the county's November 7 general election will take place at the county's Elections Office at 231 Ensign Street in Fort Morgan. Colorado House Bill 1303 requires that all elections be conducted by mail and dictates the number of in-person polling centers counties must also offer, depending on their population. Morgan County is only required to have one polling center for the November Coordinated Election. Voters can use the center can register to vote or make changes to their registration, request a replacement ballot and vote in-person. Morgan County residents may submit written input about the voting center to the Clerk and Recorder's office until October 4 by mail or email.

The commissioners also passed a previously discussed resolution amending the county's zoning rules to allow for the combination of contiguous lots. This amendment will allow property owners to build structures on two or more contiguous lots once they have been combined through the procedure the amendment outlines.

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